Full Commodore 64 Emulator Rejected from App Store

I mean, not only is it there in plain letters, but that particular clause was all over the interwebz! The fault here lies solely on the developer for spending all that time and money on development without reading the contract.

Or maybe I should say "praise". This is most likely a PR stunt to increase awareness of his product so he can then go sell it to jailbreakers (who are probably more likely to use, enjoy, and be able to understand it anyway).

A month ago they told me I had information that would be confusing across regions. I changed it immediately but they have not reviewed the app again.

I have send at least a dozen emails asking them for a review to no avail.

And this is a business app. So if anyone thought getting in was the biggest thing, think again.

This review was probably fair but then again, I have personally found dealing with the review team to be highly frustrating.

"3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s)."

The key phrase here is "other executable code"- i.e., code that isn't already in the application bundle. There's nothing wrong with running an emulator or interpreter. You just can't have it dynamically download new games or apps that weren't already bundled. It's understandable why Apple would have this restriction, or else there would be a lot of people trying to build their own app store within an app.

If the C64 app didn't allow new games to be d/l'ed then there's no reason for the rejection. Perhaps it wasn't clear to the reviewer (it certainly isn't to me, after reading that article) whether it allowed new games to be loaded or not.

"Lyscarz pointed out to us that there are a number of apps in the App Store that do exactly the same thing from CHIP-8 emulators, programmable calculators and, of course, Frotz, a Z-machine interpreter. In fact, Sega's Golden Axe and Sonic iPhone games are nothing more than emulators packaged with the original game ROMs."

With a bit of work, I suspect that the C64 Games can be repackaged in such a way that they are no longer considered "emulators."

This is stupid. This is beyond stupid. Apple is going out of their way to alienate developers and they keep going right back to the platform like the stupid sheep they are.

This is disgusting on every level.

This was an incredibly stupid move on the developer's part. They "contacted Apple Europe" who "seemed excited" and they considered that an assurance worth spending money on developing the software and purchasing licenses? It almost sounds like they emailed someone they know at Apple about what they were planning on doing, who responded "Nice...sounds cool." It sure doesn't sound like due diligence or the kind of thing you'd do before spending tons of time and money on an app you may not be able to sell. An expensive mistake, but I don't feel bad for them.

The only story here is yet another reason to dislike this policy of Apple's. Because of this policy, something exciting is not available for the iPhone.

* the policy of the appstore obviously sucks for both developers and end-users

* developers miscalculate the risk that their application will be rejected and therefore engage mindlessly into the implementation phase

There is not much to do about the first (except of course give Apple the bad PR it deserves by e.g. posting this stuff to HN). But developers can/should calculate their profit expectations more thoroughly.